No fewer than 37 Optimus Robots mingled with guests at last week's We, Robot event and the audience were treated to the spectacle of around seven of them performing a dance routine. Elon Musk also made several important statements about his plans to make them a commercial reality.

As a humanoid robot Optimus is obviously modeled on the robot in the film of Aisimov's I, Robot so calling the latest event "We, Robot" continues to play on this meme. It gave Elon Musk an opportunity to showcase the progress that has already been made while raising expectations for the forthcoming Gen-III model.

In his keynote Musk predicts:

I think this will be the biggest product ever of any kind, because I think everyone of the 8 billion people of Earth I think everyone's going to want their Optimus buddy and  then there will be [more of them] producing products and services.

Referring to how Optimus might help in the home, Musk suggests it could be a teacher or babysit your kids, could walk you dog, mow your lawn, serve drinks, cook meals or just be you friend. It terms of cost, once they are being produced at scale, they should cost less than a car, suggesting $20,000 to $30,000.

Musk said that the Tesla bot had made a lot of progress since it was announced in 2021 - when it really was just a human in a robot suit. The demonstrations at the We, Robot event showcased a much more advanced and capable robot but some of them attracted the criticism of being tele-operated rather than demonstrating autonomy. Optimus now walks more naturally and the dance routine was presumably intended to show the fluidity and range of its movements - it was however choreographed with the seven performers acting in unison.

While Optimus undoubtedly has very good dexterity, enabling it to serve drinks to attendees, it was the performance of the robot barman that led to accusations of "dishonesty". However, Tesla has never concealed the fact that it is using humans to train its robots, and has enabled the robots to learn by mimicry of human movements.

Perhaps the most impressive ability demonstrated at We, Robot is the way the robots were able to interact with attendees who were able to ask them questions and get sensible and natural replies and even get to play rock, paper, scissors - with the robot losing the game! This behavior seems entirely autonomous, suggesting that Optimus is well on the way to becoming the  buddy that can help care for the elderly that we are all hoping for.

While Musk predicts that once Optimus is produced at scale it will be an affordable option for those looking for a domestic helper, in the first instance the price tag is likely to be higher to help recoup the initial research and development costs.

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